Layer clipping

Clipping involves positioning one object inside another, creating a parent - child layer relationship. The path of the parent object becomes the new boundaries for the child object. Any areas of the child object which lie outside the parent object's path are masked (hidden).

Clipping before
Clipping after
An image clipped inside artistic text to give it texture.
Clipping in Layers panel
Layers panel showing the parent-child relationship of the above clipped image being created.

About clipping

Any object can act as a parent or child in clipping relationships. Therefore both vector objects and pixel layer content can be either clipped or clipping objects.

When scaling a parent object, child (clipped) objects scale to maintain the correct aspect ratio. Scaling a clipped object has no effect on the parent object. A clipped object can be edited independently from its parent, e.g. adjusting color, opacity, and/or blend mode.

To clip objects:
  1. On the page, position the object to be clipped so it overlaps the object which will perform the clipping.
  2. On the Layers panel, drag the object to be clipped on top of the object which is to perform the clipping. A blue highlight appears to target the layer.

The clipped object is nested within the clipping object on the Layers panel, i.e. it has become a child of the clipping object.

Expand/Collapse To select clipped objects:
  1. In the Layers panel, expand the clipping object's contents (if needed) by clicking the layer's arrow.
  2. Click to select the clipped object.

The clipped object can now be moved and edited as needed.

To remove clipping from an object (unclip):
To resize an object without scaling its child layer content:

SEE ALSO: